u/OkCanary7940

Hi everyone! newish investor here (few years in), so be gentle..
I'm one of the 100k original VCX holders (not many shares by any means) but wanted to share my thesis heading into September and hear your thoughts.

A few things about my position first:

Honestly thankful for the lockup - I would've sold at $500+ and I'm glad I didn't. The more I've researched, the more convicted I've become.

Ben Miller's mission genuinely resonates with me and I think this fund was built to solve a real problem for everyday investors and regardless of how it performs I’m thankful for the opportunity to be a part of it. (Hoping he’s speaking the truth bc I’ve been fooled before🤞)

Now the fun part - I see two scenarios:

Scenario 1: The "crash" doesn't happen (my lean)
Everyone's assuming a September tank. I think that assumption itself is the miscalculation.

Here's why:

- NAV is probably $40+ now given recent Anthropic/OpenAI revaluations. It seems many growth stocks trade at 4-5x their NAV (Correction: meant companies like Apple, Amazon, etc trade at premium to earnings*). Bears are using a stale number and anyone seeing this as a $19/NAV still is bizarre to me.

- Google, Amazon and Microsoft have billions personally invested in these portfolio companies succeeding. That's not nothing and with Blackrocks new multi billion dollar commitment to spaceX on top of the S&P 500 fast track I’m feeling pretty confident in the major 3 positions. Just those 3 alone would have me purchasing the fund but I’ve done research on the rest of the portfolio and my hats off to Ben and his team - there’s a solid reason the stock is performing the way it is right now and I trust they’ll continue to make strategic moves to increase their positions.

- The short thesis assumes mass selling but tax implications alone probably keep 40-50% of original holders from touching it. Nobody wants a massive short term capital gains bill on 1,000% + returns. I understand some people have been investing for years but many were probably like myself who invested in the real estate funds and then moved towards the innovation fund later down the line when it started gaining traction. If anyone has any true data regarding the original investors please share bc that would help me in narrowing down my strategy. 🙏

Also, the short positions will most likely panic and have to buy it back at a premium (in all honesty, I don’t completely understand how that all works but open to learning).

- Lastly, the demand. My dad has been beating himself up for not listening to me and wants in but is waiting for September or for it to hit $90-120 again bc he’s retired and can’t risk a large portion of his portfolio. Multiply that by thousands of investors sitting on the sidelines and you have a massive demand wall ready to absorb any selling pressure which leads me to my next point.

I think Fundrise does one of two things before September that make a bear argument harder to stand by: splits the stock (bringing it to $40-50 range which floods in retail demand and psychologically changes everything) or sells premium shares to fund new investments.

The split theory is actually my strongest conviction.
Ik it’s not normally what happens but Fundrise's entire mission is democratizing investing for average people- letting it sit at $200-300+ contradicts everything they stand for and like my dad, your everyday/ close to retirement investor is looking at this as risky. A split at $50 and I'm personally doubling down because I see it easily going in the hundreds again. At $300 I'm probably trimming because it would be hard for me to see every day people buying it at $1000 or more. Idk I know it’s the same but the Psychology is real 😂

Second theory: they may sell new shares so they can continue to reinvest and that automatically increases NAV. I foresee the fund selling at a premium because of the way private companies are evaluated and with the current giants in the fund that go public I think this stock will remain a premium for quite a while bc it’s a one stop for all three so that potentially works out when more capital is needed to deploy.

Scenario 2 - People panic and sell

Here’s why (the obvious):

- Some original investors freak out and dump. Honestly? I get it because unlike me who had about $2k originally, some people are sitting with millions and that’s life changing money. If they do sell I’ll be happily using that as a buying opportunity. 😉

- The original monetary amount invested in the portfolio was not an insane amount of money and people may question if the evaluations are already too high for some of the companies within the portfolio. Also, if investors are only in it for one company they may pull out to invest when that company goes ipo.

- there’s no personal control over what happens in the portfolio- if the fund managers sell SpaceX , Anthropic etc when they IPO to reinvest in other companies that may not do as well or if the managers start getting sloppy then we’re SOL.

Bottom line: I think September is being wildly misread by the bears. Between tax incentives keeping holders in, institutional buyers waiting for any dip, a potential split, and three near-trillion dollar IPOs on the horizon - the "great crash" narrative might age very poorly.

Happy to be wrong bc again I’m a new investor so please poke holes but I’m feeling ready to ride the wave ☺️👇